The new gTLDs: ask the experts

Let’s start with a question that people often assume is simple, but one that is rarely asked: what are the new gTLDs for?

Nick Wenban-Smith (NWS): The official answer is, it’s to increase choice for anyone who has the money and technical capacity and energy to go through the consensus policy processes.

David Taylor (DT): The new gTLD programme was approved by the ICANN board in June 2008, and it is since then that the noise has been growing. However, it’s always been the role of ICANN to expand the TLD space and what’s happening hasn’t come out of nowhere.

There have been previous launches of new gTLDs in 2000 and 2004, and we’ve just had .xxx, which has been hanging around for a decade. So new gTLDs have been launching over the last decade, the big difference was in June 2008, with the plan to open up the domain name system to an unlimited number, so we may be looking at 200 to 2,000 coming along in the space of a few years.

The biggest concern for brand owners is doing it in a measured and controlled manner. If it’s a free-for-all, it could get problematic.

NWS: ICANN doesn’t really explain why there’s an unlimited expansion. Perhaps no-one can think of a fairer way.

DT: Market delivery and market forces will mean it will find its own level, which is why ICANN doesn’t know how many there will be: 100, 1,500 or 3,000? No one knows. If it is supposed to be for everyone, is it clear who will actually end up using it in practice?

Lorna Gradden (LG): It’s not clear yet, but there are a lot of indications that brands will be much more represented than anyone. The idea was much more in terms of increasing diversity in the Internet space. I think ICANN’s view was it would be more community and geographic-based, along with some keywords, but I think that brands will probably come rushing in, and that was certainly not originally envisaged.

Alexander Carter-Silk (ACS): One thing is the costs, which are going to be looked on as not so much inclusive as exclusive. However, the probability of someone outpositioning you or getting through the process to obtain a new TLD is low.

I agree that the brands will pile in. One thing is that under the current system people are feeling like they have to collect a vast number of domains that they don’t need, whereas if this process gets recognition, the bad boys will stick out like a sore thumb.

Andy Churley (AC): The new gTLDs programme is not replacing the existing TLD or ccTLD infrastructure, so organisations will have to review their strategy for registering. We still are in the dark as to how many applications ICANN will receive, but facing any organisation, whether or not it applies for a new TLD, is the fact that there are potentially hundreds of possible new TLDs under which it may be eligible to register names.

So, while some registries will be closed, in that only the brand owner will be able to register names under them, some will be community and some geographic, and that will have an effect on any organisation’s domain name registration strategy, irrespective of whether they go through the application process themselves.

If you don’t have control of your domain name and it goes down, you can lose your online presence. A lot of brand owners are looking at a new gTLD in terms of the security and control benefits that a new gTLD can bring and are willing to make the investment on those grounds alone.

There are lots of reasons why people will feel more secure. Are they justified in feeling that? Is it really more secure?

AC: It will affect business risk. If you’re a bank and registered under bank.com, anyone can come along and register banksecurity.com. That’s out of your control. Whereas if you control your own closed registry TLD you are the only one who can issue and use those names, so in terms of security, it’s a reduction of risk but not an increase in technical security.

ACS: If you own the TLD, gradually over time people will get to trust it, so they will question the other domains but question the top level less.

AC: Some benefits are clearer than others, for example, one benefit to a bank is that the message to the customer is very simple: “if you interact with us online you go through your own customer webpage, only ever transact with us through that web page.” It doesn't provide any additional technical security but it™s a simple marketing message that customers can take on board and will, we hope, reduce phishing fraud.

NWS: Is that distinguishable from the current situation with just investing in Barclays.com?

AC: Yes it is, because people will get confused by Barclays-security.com or customerregistrationbarclays. com. That’s proven, but if the message is “we own this, only interact with us through .Barclays or your own customer page”, it’s a nice simple message that has been very difficult to convey so far.

DT: It’s a valid point, but I wonder how easy that communication is going to be. .bank is a good example, and taking your example of Barclays, whilst you might see .Barclays in the future there is also the question as to what to do under a possible .bank TLD. Do Barclays also register Barclays.bank? Do they then use both options, or do they register the two and never use one, or do they also register Barclays.web just in case someone gets confused and then under other new gTLDs?

Stacey King (SK): You will have a good 5 to 10 years of consumer education that has to take place before consumers really get used to the new gTLDs. Consumers will eventually get used to them, but when you look at what happened with domain names, registrations and real corporate sites really didn’t start in any volume until 1994 and took until 2000 for the users to become comfortable with them; and from 2000 until the past few years for them to completely move from direct navigation to search. Now brand owners have to point consumers in the opposite direction to get them to look back at URLs. Brands have a tough task ahead of them. For the first five years they will have to make consumers understand what the new gTLDs are and why they are important. During this period of time your .coms will likely be a lot more valuable, because consumers understand them, whereas a lot of consumers are currently suspicious of the other gTLDs.

LG: Not all brands are simply going for their brand names. Some hope to own a generic word in their area, but it becomes potentially a more difficult message when it’s a .generic rather than .brand.

AC: We saw the same thing when the dot coms started to be registered. Organisations that moved first secured the generics and they have had the competitive advantage ever since: elevator.com, diy.com. They’re owned by brands—they’re not community—so they have been trading on competitive advantage since they were registered. Some organisations are sensitive to the new gTLDs because in the early days they didn’t get the generic that they wanted, and now they are seriously considering what they can do about the new ones.

SK: Getting the generic domain name at the second level within a gTLD doesn’t really prevent others from doing the same thing. If I have bank. com, someone else can have banks.com, whereas if you have .bank, you control that whole space. And you need to consider the potential competition issues. If you get a generic and block out all your competitors on that generic, it may cause problems.

AC: It all comes down to the community issue. How do you even get through the ICANN evaluation to prove you are a legitimate community to represent that extension? We’ve had all sorts of challenges with suffixes such as .xxx and .jobs, and these will continue.

Who will bear the responsibility for educating the public about the new TLDs?

SK: My impression is that ICANN and the registries are hoping the .brands will do it for them. In reality, everyone will have to get involved in the end. Governments, ISPs, consumer groups, brands, registries, registrars, and anyone else who touches the area and has money or resources invested in this. Even search engines like Google will need to help educate the public. Helping consumers to navigate the sheer volume of new TLDs will be the biggest task. Say there are 400 generics. If you think about the number of domain names and the content currently on the existing gTLDs—particularly the link farms; the bad actors who set up rubbish pages to link through to get higher Google rankings; the counterfeit sites; the malware sites; etc.— and then multiply that by the number of new gTLDs. To me it is obvious that search functions will maintain or even increase their importance to get through the chaos. But to continue to be viable long-term, they will have to start educating consumers about how to look through the garbage to find the authentic sites, the real commentary pages, or whatever.

NWS: But 400 generics will lose out to the firstmover advantage. It will be impossible to takeusers away from .com. Look at what happened to the likes of .info and .biz; they are all a fraction of the volume of .com, and the new generic open TLDs will be a fraction of a fraction.

ACS: I disagree with that. There are only two barriers, the vetting during the TLD application process and the cost of applying for and maintaining a TLD. Anything that gives a perceived competitive advantage as well as security is a brand advantage and an opportunity to restate your position.

"It is obvious that search functions will maintain or even increase their importance to get through the chaos."

NWS: What about defensive registrations? Does a brand register in .web and .shop and .whatever, and then defensively register times 400? I don’t think that the size of registries is going to be anywhere near as big as .com.

DT: It’s a game changer, the strategy has to change. If 400 generics come through and you’re a brand and measure your costs today across the existing domain name extensions, then if you operate under the same defensive principles that’s going to double or triple your costs. That’s a problem. Until now it has been a trickle. Surprisingly, a lot of people have registered for .xxx. But the sudden flood of TLDs will cause strategies to change. I note a subtle difference in the way new TLD launches are being discussed. Previously, with .eu and .asia for example, people talked about numbers of registrations. Today everyone is talking about the amount of money that the .xxx TLD is making. But I think it’s fundamentally wrong for people to think that they will always make money out of TLDs. .xxx has launched in isolation, without hundreds of other TLDs launching around it. If many others launch alongside, such as .web .sport and .hotel, you may well not have anywhere near the same take up. Are brands for instance going to apply for sunrise registrations under each and every one of these new gTLDs and pay the associated costs?